The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (47 page)

Dave commented, “He’s got to be feeling pretty confident and cocky.”

Ted gulped with pride as Dave pointed out the Riverman’s prowess. Even though Ted thought he was superior to the Riverman, the Riverman was one of the gentlemen, a fellow serial killer. And Ted rushed to explain the Riverman’s certainty, “Yeah. Yup. He’s got to feel very confident in his abilities, and yet he also knows that he’s failed, in that you’ve been finding the victims, and he doesn’t want you to. So he knows he’s got to get better. Even though he knows he’s outdistancing you, he’s got a brain in his head and knows there’s always a chance and he’s doing his damned best to reduce those risks. And, you know, he could feel like he’s in competition with the task force, you, Bob, or with somebody, and point totally towards being an individual who gets off on that. Certainly, there’s an amount of competition between this individual and the police. It’s just got to be. But whether he really gets off on that or whether, in fact, that’s just sort of a benefit, I don’t want to say that.

“It is a corollary kind of thing, you know. It’s not the main course. I mean, he’s getting off on killing these women. That’s what he’s getting off on. I just don’t get the feeling that he’s really eager to come out and taunt you or play games. Not to say that he
might not want to, at one time or another. But to just give it all up in that way is a lot of pressure on him. And not to say that he’s not deeply disturbed, because obviously he is. But he’s also well controlled. So some time or another, you might have a break. It’s not unrealistic to think he might call you or write you. But that doesn’t seem to be his basic thing. He’s not unstable in the way that he’s going to play a game with you right now. He might, at one point, become despondent because, when he’s doing all this, he can’t be conducting normal relationships with people. His whole life is upset. He might find it hard to hold a job, hard to make relationships with other people. The pressure of threatening detectives, not to mention the fact that there’s an entire task force after him. Notwithstanding what anybody says—I’m sure there’s got to be a sense of remorse. It may not be very strong. It may be stronger sometimes than others. But all of this is speculative.”

Now seemed as good a time as any to focus on the amount of remorse expressed by serial killers. Common beliefs among forensic psychiatrists were that psychopathic killers did not feel any remorse toward their victims. The only remorse Ted ever felt was over being caught, if you can call that remorse in a general sense. If there was any ounce of remorse in a killer, Ted was about to tell us how to exploit those feelings. So I asked, “You don’t believe in the theory that serial killers have no remorse?”

Ted said, “Oh no. No. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that theory at all. Alcoholics who I’ve known suffer a great deal of remorse. That doesn’t stop them from drinking. Some alcoholics can’t hold a job, and their families are falling apart. They know they’re being mean and cruel to people, yet they still drink. And they feel very bad about it, but can’t stop themselves. And I’m sure there are some people who kill who feel no remorse. But I think it’s very accurate to say that just ’cause a man feels remorse doesn’t mean he wants to turn himself in and be executed by the state. Because a man feels remorse doesn’t mean he can control the deep drive or compulsion that causes him to kill. So I think there very well may be gaps, periods between victims, where the reason he
doesn’t do anything is because he’s just despondent over his inability to control his behavior. Who knows? You can’t stereotype this kind of individual. Anything is possible, and unfortunately there’s only one individual. There is one person who knows the real person. And he’s quite capable of feeling all the ranges of emotion that you do. And don’t overlook the fact that he, in many respects, is as normal as anybody else. He may not be, but this guy has lasted long enough that he’s not a raving maniac. He’s not obviously disturbed, in my opinion, or else I think that he would have come apart. He would have made a more serious mistake. He would have made himself more obvious to you. Do you get—follow—me?”

Obligingly, I said, “Oh yeah.”

Foreshadowing his own efforts to save his neck, Ted warned, “Don’t underestimate his capacity to plead his remorse. And as a matter of fact, I would say if you ever feel like you have a good suspect, and [he] does not know that he’s a suspect, probably the best way to approach him is quickly. I’m serious. If he gets to an attorney—thinking like a cop—the fact of the matter is if you give him any time to collect his thoughts, he’s more than likely to be able to compose himself again, ’cause he is a very controlled individual. But if you catch this guy unaware and are able to question him, God forbid that you don’t violate the Constitution, I think you’d stand a much better chance of getting him to open up.”

“But you do believe there’s a chance that this person might talk about what he’s done?” Dave asked.

“Well, sure. If you catch him at it. Sure,” Ted confidently answered.

Because Dave knew there was little information left that was known only to the Riverman and police, Dave asked, “Do we show him what we’ve got against him before he’ll open up?”

“You got to make him think you know—it’s a tremendous burden he’s carrying around with him,” Ted said. “And you got to make him think you think he’s guilty. That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? But this is a terrible case. And if he thinks you think he’s guilty and he’s carrying around this particular burden, he’s going to want to just let it off. He’s going to be so torn up inside, he’ll let it
go, if he’s the kind of person I think he is. And, which reminds me, let me give you an example of Gerald Stano, who is similar to the Riverman. I don’t want to get much into him because Stano is in prison here. Nobody had a line on Gerry that I know of. And he just came out of nowhere and said, ‘Hey, I want to talk.’ That’s my understanding. I don’t know if that’s what really happened. He was in the Florida state prison before he went to the police and said, ‘Hey, I did all this.’ You know, whether it was the skill of the detective down at Daytona Beach? It was his skill in bringing Stano along to the point where Stano said, ‘Sure, I’ll just tell you everything.’ But I think it may be a combination of Stano wanting to tell, and somebody knowing how to get it out of him. But Gerry is back on our wing with three to four death sentences and now he won’t say anything except hi. He’s funny. Finally, he came out of whatever phase he was in, and the state of Florida in its benevolence rewarded him for his honesty by giving him four death sentences. Well, that’s the way the game is played. But now I think Gerry is saying, ‘Hey, I really didn’t mean all that stuff I told you all about. I don’t know anything about it.’ And that’s the position you put somebody in, if you bring the full weight of the state down on them. Start to remind them of that and, hey, you’re a goner. But, on the other hand, be nice to us and tell us everything, you are sort of working at cross-purposes. It’s not a situation that makes people want to talk, even though they might want to. But Gerry doesn’t know anything. I mean, as far as I know, he’s one of the nicest, pleasantest individuals I’ve ever run across, and will not say boo about anything that you say to the police. He’s not like Ottis Toole, Lucas’s partner. Ottis Toole will sit back there, from what I understand, all afternoon long and tell people about what they did. And Toole is a little bit off center. Agh, he’s an entirely different kind of individual than Gerry Stano. Entirely different.”

Bundy had followed the publicity charade of Henry Lee Lucas, a self-professed serial killer. Lucas’s partner in crime was Ottis Toole, whom Bundy had met on death row at the Florida State Penitentiary. Lucas and Toole were leading law enforcement officers to numerous sites of their murders. At one point, it was estimated that they had murdered, collectively, over 360 people. Their rationale for talking about their murders was of interest to Bundy. He was amazed that they were giving blow-by-blow descriptions on audio-and
videotaped interviews. Since Bundy had previously suggested that the Riverman might have to find a heavenly spirit in order to confess, I offered that Lucas had found the Lord or seen the light.

Unconvinced, Bundy said, “Well, you know, I guess that’s good, if in fact he feels he needs to do it.”

One of the things that made Lucas different from other serial killers was that he was known to have murdered many people who were acquaintances of one another. He often killed a number of people within a circle of friends. Feeling that Bundy had at least once murdered casual acquaintances of one another, such as the women in the Chi Omega sorority, I pressed him by asking, “You haven’t covered too well the fact that the Riverman attacked victims who knew each other, especially those who were apparently abducted on the same day, like Opal Mills and Cynthia Hinds or Bush and Summers.”

Bundy’s reaction to the idea that one victim lured the other was predictable. Bundy the killer avoided that possibility like it was a disease. We knew not to tread too heavily on this subject because any explanation he gave would venture too close to murders for which he was under the death sentence and was actively appealing. Instead, he cleverly changed the direction of the interview by focusing on why the Riverman would have abducted two women during the same day, even though he had touched on this subject earlier. Bundy temporarily escaped the intended topic, because, in his need for one-upmanship, he prioritized what he thought we needed to cover. He changed the subject, saying, “For some reason, I thought the dates of those victims were close in time. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Like Bush and Summers and Hinds and Mills and—only because of how close they disappeared and how close it appears their disappearances were. In the cases of those two couples, they were both black, which is kind of suspicious to me in that they would disappear so close together. Either he’s very intense and does one and has to come back the next day and do the other—or the same day and do a second. Like I said earlier, to get one, he has to do both of them. Or maybe they’re both standing
there and one walks up while he’s talking to the other, and he just really is so intense at that period of time, at that point of time he needs one so bad, that he’s willing to take the extra risk of taking two.”

Suspecting that Bundy might have kept Janice Ott alive at the Issaquah site while he returned with Denise Naslund, I asked, “Do you think he’s keeping one captive and bringing the other one back? If he’s picking up two reasonably close together like that, what do you think the chain of events is?” The two closest victims of the Green River Killer in dates of disappearance were Gabbert and Pitsor, but their body recovery sites were miles apart.

Ted was racially biased in the selection of his own victims. He was never known to cross racial boundaries. Because of that, it was difficult for him to concentrate on our questions regarding the black female victims of the Riverman. Bundy had read the FBI’s research studies, which highlighted the fact that white males usually kill white females and black males kill black females unless there is an intervening variable, such as prostitution, in the motivation of the killer. Ted acted as if he and the Riverman were on the same team, colleagues united against the world. Therefore, Ted wanted very much for the Riverman to be like him, so he stubbornly insisted, “Well, I want to take Gabbert and Pitsor separately, not only because they’re both white girls, but because they disappeared from different locations and their bodies were found at different places. Also, they were last seen on the same day. Pitsor was last seen in downtown Seattle, but is it possible that she hopped on a bus and was on the streets on Pacific Highway South? Had she ever been known to be down there? Was she ever known to hustle down there?” Of course, the answer was yes.

Ted went on, “The thing that strikes me about Gabbert and Pitsor is that if they disappeared from different locations in the same day, it indicated this guy has, at times, an incredible need, a compulsion. You have to understand that a guy’s need to do this ebbs and flows, which probably accounts for the variations and intensity over periods of time. And sometimes it’s probably to the point where he has
to take unnecessary risks just to do what he wants to do. He’s not as rational at times as he is at others.”

Ted cautioned, “If you’re off by a day, it puts a slightly different complexion on it. But obviously, it looks to me like he did one and just didn’t feel like that was enough and went back for seconds.”

The surprising thing about Ted’s analysis of the Pitsor skull find was that he accurately predicted that “it doesn’t appear that she was decapitated or anything. I think the chances are that the animals just drug that skull around and you didn’t find the other small bones.” That is exactly what we concluded when we discovered the rest of her bones over a year after her skull was discovered. That Ted would even consider decapitation when neither Dave nor I suggested it in any form opened the door to a tempting line of questioning. One widely held theory was that Ted decapitated his Taylor Mountain victims, but we knew talking about that might threaten the longevity of our interview.

Ted continued, “Well, he left Gabbert by the Star Lake area and went back to a familiar location. Gosh, who can say what’s going through the man’s mind? To him, it’s logical. There’s a reason why he’s doing it. That doesn’t make sense to anybody looking at it and saying, ‘Well, he’s inconsistent or he’s not behaving sensibly.’ But to him he’s making sense. There’s some reason why he’s doing it. Maybe there’s no reason at all. He’s just doing it because that’s what he feels like doing. It’s hard to say. The only thing clear is that he’s trying to dispose of the bodies so nobody will find them. That much I can say for sure. It looks like he did them separately, if for no other reason than their bodies were found in separate locations and they disappeared from separate places. But the fascinating thing is he could have done it on the same day, which says something about the intensity of his need to murder at particular times.”